Government's response sought on TB medicines usage

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the government's response on a plea that the existing stocks of tuberculosis medicine be utilized for giving daily doses to patients.

Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachd sought the government's response as PIL petitioner Raman Kakkar said that the government could well use its existing stocks for giving daily doses of tuberculosis medicine to the patients.

Kakkar, a Haryana-based medical officer associated with revised national TB control programme of India, is seeking the implementation of the government decision to administer TB doses to patients every day instead of the earlier practice of thrice a week.

He pointed out that TB medicines stocked with the government could be utilized for the present and arrangement for the future could be made in due course.

The court on Friday asked the Deputy Director General (TB) in the Health and Family Welfare Ministry to file an affidavit stating the government position on the plea.

In December 2016, the central government told the top court that it had decided to phase out the intermittent doses regime and switch over to daily doses.

The court was told that the switch-over would commence in five states.

Kakkar moved the top court for shifting to daily doses regime after studying 5,300 cases where he found the reappearance of the disease in patients who were treated and cured by giving doses thrice a week.

He found that in many cases, the resurfacing of the disease proved to be fatal.

--IANS

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